The Fourth Dimension
by Lunatic of a Third Kind
Summary: A simple fiction book puts strange ideas into Harry's head. Currently just a potential premise for a larger story; a plot bunny, if you will.


I thought of a premise for a time travel story, though I haven't an idea yet of where to be time traveling _to _– but I thought that, well, it would be neat to have a premise handy, and that it would be quite interesting if the idea of traveling through time away from his life and problems was an idea that Harry had cherished for many years, far before the escapist fantasy of Hogwarts presented itself.

**Disclaimer**: J K Rowling owns the Harry Potter franchise, not I, and I should have you well informed of that fact indeed.

* * *

Once upon a time, before Harry was ever a wizard and instead just a lonely and mistreated young boy who strange things happened to, he slipped into the school library during recess and picked up a book called The Time Machine.

Since he wasn't allowed to perform better than his cousin when it came to marks that went home and because he would rather not be available on the playground for a rousing round of Harry Hunting, he figured this was the best way to spend his free time – he wouldn't _really_ be learning anything by reading fiction, because fiction was pretend and most of it was definitely not about Normal things. This way, he didn't have as much knowledge to hide in the first place. It was sound logic.

He knew better than to borrow any books to take home – well, maybe he _could_ get away with something on gardening, or cooking, but that would be nonfiction and helpful to the Dursleys. The little vindictive twist in his stomach very much liked spending this time going directly against their wishes by reading not Normal, impractical things, especially when he had the option to be helpful instead.

As he read, he sometimes made lists of the words he didn't know to ask the librarian about: _expounding_, _recondite_,_ incandescent, trammels, fecundity, controvert_ – Harry told himself that maybe it was a bad sign when the first page had so many words over his head. But the mental image of the pale Time Traveller, with twinkling grey eyes and an unusual energy about him had captured the boy's curiosity already. He retold the story in his own improvisations of what the words might mean as he went, and it was honestly a bit fun. Imaginative, even, as his English teacher might have called it before Harry had begun to perform absolutely unexceptionably in her class.

Here is what he had made the Time Traveller's story, so far:

The pale, grey-eyed man was pacing around the room, gesturing with a pronounced energy as he went – his guests (of which he had so far identified three – whoever was narrating, the Psychologist, and Filby) in contrast all sat, in armchairs even cushier than Uncle Vernon's looked to be because the chairs were just plain friendly like that. There was a fire burning in the hearth, and it might have been winter but was probably evening, because groups of adults usually only lazed about in armchairs in the evenings.

Right now they were all talking about Maths. Or more precisely, that the Maths taught in school were all wrong.

Harry thought that was an alright idea, considering that Maths often didn't make too much sense to him in the first place. Besides the Time Traveller, the book had left the appearance of the other characters much more wobbly – except red-haired Filby, who he pictured with overwhelming amounts of freckles, too, and a permanent scrunch between his eyebrows. The Psychologist was so mystifying-sounding a title that they must have been a foreigner, Harry concluded – he mentally subbed in an amalgamated picture of every 'ethnic' person his family had ever complained about.

Then there was another character: a 'very young man' who was trying to light a cigar. Having been called young man some rare times himself, the very young man quickly became a boy from Harry's own age group (or even slightly below, since he was _very_ young), desperately trying to look mature in the company of all the other characters. He was sure the other boy must have felt nervous, hence his fumbling and rather noncommittal interjection of "very clear indeed."

...But the room just got fuller and fuller! Now there was a Provincial Mayor in attendance, too. This was getting out of hand. That made five guests, and only the one Time Traveller to entertain them all. Not that the man seemed to be having any trouble with it: his talk of fourth dimensions was drawing them all into thoughtfulness. 'Time is only a kind of Space,' he said, and the simplicity of the phrase stuck in Harry's head.

(Six guests now, he dully noted to himself on the next page, when the Medical Man started to pipe in. Now he wondered why only Filby didn't get his own 'the.')

Precisely when the Time Traveller had brought out an intricate little model for – whatever his experiment was going to be, the bell rung to announce that his free time was over and done with. Harry muttered his page number to himself a few times, and slipped the book onto a shelf, sideways, hidden behind all the other books so that he could be sure to retrieve it next time.

Even as he sunk back into droll routine, his mind stayed awhirl with thoughts of little white levers, mysterious Travellers with grey eyes, and the man's strange dialogue on the fourth dimension.

* * *

'Time is only a kind of Space,' he thought to himself as he sat on his cot with his knees to his chest, watching the movement of dim, spindly shapes he knew to be spiders. 'Wouldn't it be something, if I could just jump up through time to when I'm grown and gone from here?'

Technically, he already was, a single day at a time, second matched per second as he perceived it. But, as the Time Traveller had said, he could remember the past and for those moments, leap backwards – and when he came back to his presence of mind, he imagined that he was hurtling forward to the future, speed determined entirely by how far back he'd thought to. At those moments, wouldn't he be moving forward for much faster than he could normally perceive?

He realized he was thinking himself in circles. Harry wasn't sure if he'd really understood what the Time Traveller had been telling his six dinner guests. They were all adults, after all – except the very young man, who was surely somewhere near Harry's age. Hadn't _he _said he had understood? Of course, at first read Harry had concluded he was faking to hide his own nervousness – but maybe he wasn't. If he just thought over the words enough, considered it _deeply_ enough, maybe Harry could understand what it all really meant.

'Time is only a kind of Space,' he informed himself again. And once, not so long ago... Harry abashedly admitted to himself that he had suddenly leaped a little in Space - going_ up_ in fact - without any machine to aid him. Nothing like the Medical Man's balloons or what have you. Something strange had happened, and then suddenly he was on the school's roof.

Harry couldn't help but think that whatever had been about to happen next in the book would have been something strange in itself.

So if he, in his own... abnormality, what he'd been told over and over was _freakishness_, could move in three dimensions like people normally couldn't on their own...

...Did that mean maybe he could move abnormally in the fourth?


End file.
